The Fatal Revenant Part 26

Immediately Jeremiah flung up his arms, casting his magic to complete the arch of Covenant's heat over Linden's head. Their blast of power blinded her; snuffed out the stubborn bulk of the hills and the crouching menace of the trees; cast her adrift.

This time, however, the wrench of movement was not instantaneous. Instead of staggering without transition, flailing to find her balance on a hillside for which her muscles were not prepared, she seemed to hang suspended in a darkness as absolute as extinction. While her heart beat frantically, she heard nothing, saw nothing; felt nothing except her own fear. The tangible world had pa.s.sed away, leaving her alone in a void like the abyss between the stars.

Then, distinctly, she heard Covenant rasp, "h.e.l.lfire!" Heat struck her like a hand, slapping her back into existence.

She fell. For one small instant, a tiny sliver of time, she appeared to fall interminably. Then her feet hit the slope of a steep hill, and she tumbled headlong downward.

She lost her grip on the Staff: her bundle of food vanished in residual midnight. Instinctively she ducked her head, tucked herself into a ball. When she collided with the hard earth, the impact drove the air from her lungs, but she rolled instead of breaking.

Dirt and rock and sky whirled around her indistinguishably, too swift to be defined. There was no sunlight: she had plunged into shadow. Gloom and stones crowded around her as she rolled. Her companions and the Staff were gone. Covenant and Jeremiah were closed to her, Covenant wanted to repay some of this pain, but she should have been able to discern the presence of the Staff, her Staff, the instrument of Law which she had called into being with love and grief and wild magic.

An instant later, she felt her opportunity. Kicking out her legs, she caught herself in mid-plummet and stumbled to her feet.

Her surroundings continued to whirl, dusk and sky and bitter yearning in a vertiginous gyre. She may have splintered bones, torn open flesh: if so, her hurts brought no pain. Shock m.u.f.fled everything that she might have known about herself.

Covenant and Jeremiah had disappeared, but she did not stand in shadow. As the spinning of the world slowed, she saw clear sky overhead; saw the sun. Its cold illumination should have reached her. Yet the gloom persisted. She stood near the bottom of a hollow between two outstretched ribs of the Last Hills. To her left, veiled by impossible twilight, lay the threatening wall of the forest. Through the dusk, she saw jutting plinths of stone below her, sharp spurs that strained out of the dirt like doomed fingers clutching for air and open sky; release. Among them, she thought that she recognized the shape of her bundled supplies.

A few steps farther down the slope, near the jagged stones, she saw the unmistakable length of her Staff. Its clean wood glowed softly in the eldritch twilight.

But Covenant-Her son- "Linden!" Covenant shouted. Jeremiah called. "Mom!"

She barely heard them. Their voices were wrapped in dusk, muted and unattainable: they seemed to come from some other dimension of reality, a plane beyond her grasp. She would have tried to answer them, but she had no air in her lungs; had forgotten how to breathe.

Stiff-kneed and lurching, she made her way down into the hollow to reclaim the Staff.

"Linden!" Covenant may have howled, raging. "h.e.l.l and blood!" But she could not be certain that she heard him.

As soon as her fingers closed on the immaculate surface of the wood, a taste of Law flowed into her, and she regained an aspect of herself. Gasping, she began to suck air fervently into her lungs. Between one heartbeat and the next, she discovered that she had suffered a dozen sc.r.a.pes and bruises, but had broken nothing. A moment of the Staffs flame-only a moment-would be enough to ease her battered condition. If she dared to raise power in this preternatural shadow, and could be sure that Jeremiah and Covenant would not suffer for it- She restrained herself, however. The comfort of the Staff in her hands was enough to sustain her until she could determine why her son's voice and Covenant's reached her as though they occupied some other time and place, a world beyond her grasp.

The sun shone on the Last Hills and Garroting Deep, but its light did not touch her. It could not illumine the hollow, or the straining stones, or the consequences of her fall.

"Mom!" Jeremiah called from the far side of the heavens. "Can you hear me?"

She should have tried to respond. But her throat was full of twilight and trepidation: she seemed to have no words and no voice. Moment by moment, the Staff reawakened her health-sense. She felt intentions in the caliginous air. An impression of purpose and desire swirled about her as though the gloom were mist. She was in the presence of sentience, encompa.s.sed by a being or beings as impalpable as thought, and as a.n.a.lystic.

Puissant beings-They're going to catch us.

But her perceptions remained vague, as disquieting as a badly smeared lens: they spurned accuracy. Instead her paresthesia intensified in spite of her grasp on the Staff. She saw the sound of her own hoa.r.s.e breathing as if it emerged from her mouth in twisted blotches of distress. In the gloom, she heard shapes and precision which her senses were too blunt to identify. The cold was the distant clatter and collision of thunder. Her hurts smelled like bile, tasted like sulfur.

Confusion filled her sight, m.u.f.fling her companions' shouts. Evening crept along her skin like the play of ruinous fingers: it probed her flesh to determine who and what she was. Loud forms twisted and squirmed around her, evanescent as tendrils, dangerous as tentacles; but an eerie delinition prevented her from hearing them clearly.

Somewhere beyond her, Jeremiah was saying, howling, murmuring, "Covenant, they've got her! The Viles! They don't want us. They want her."

The shadow had a voice which she could not hear. They had voices which surpa.s.sed her senses, etiolating Jeremiah's fright, forcing her to mistake the color of her own heartbeat. At the same time, however, she felt crepuscular ropey streamers coalesce into deeper darkness: she saw them speak. They had only one voice, but they were many. They said many things. She saw one of them-or saw several of them one at a time.

Limned in condensation and grue, the voice announced, Her, as if it had heard Jeremiah. Of course. How should it be otherwise?

Distinctly she heard tentacles curl and shift; saw them p.r.o.nounce, The others are perilous. They have power. They exert themselves. And they responded to themselves, Yet hers is as great, and she does not. Within her she holds the devastation of the Earth, yet she permits the others to have their will.

It is unseemly, the same voice said or answered. It is a mystery. And again, or differently: Our lore does not account for this.

With the nerves of her skin, Linden felt Covenant raging. "h.e.l.lfire, Linden!

Give me my ring! Just throw it. I'll catch it. I can't protect you without my ring!"

Viles, she thought dimly. Sensory distortion made a writhen vapor of her mind. She could not think consecutively. Covenant wanted his ring. The beings around her were Viles, the makers of the Demondim: absent in her proper time, but present here. He had always wanted his ring, ever since he had first ridden into Revelstone with Masters and Jeremiah.

Spectres and ghouls. Tormented spirits.

Esmer had tried to warn her. Instead of answering her most necessary questions, he had described the history of the Viles and Demondim.

Her former lover hungered for wild magic: he craved it to repay some of this pain, although he had not said so.

Fragments of the One Forest's lost soul. Creatures of miasma, evanescent and dire.

Do you not know, Esmer had asked her, that the Viles were once a lofty and admirable race?

It must be extinguished. The voices spoke to themselves, wisps and tendrils of elusive, impermeable darkness, using words which Linden could see but not hear, feel but not smell or taste.

It does not concern us. In the swirl of shadow, she recognized hebetude, condescension, disdain. It does not interest us.

New possibilities are coming to life. Old powers are changing.

It interests us intimately, an image or sensation argued. She is a lover of trees.

She is. Still she does not concern US.

Deliracy possessed her, a whirl of memory and confusion as lurid as fever, gravid as nightmare. Eidolons spoke so vividly that she winced. I can't do it without you. At the same time, Esmer continued his remembered impatient peroration. For an age of the Earth, they spurned the heinous evils buried among the roots of Gravin Threndor "d.a.m.nation, Linden!" Covenant's fury crawled down her spine. I can't help you unless you find me. "Give me my ring!"

-and even in the time of Berek Lord-Fatherer no ill was known of them.

Ravers did this, she thought disjointedly. Esmer had told her so. Sounds danced around the desperate fingers of stone. Just be wary of me. Remember that I'm dead. She could not escape the rampant blurring discontinuity in her nerves, the disorder of her mind. The Ravers began cunningly to twist the hearts of the sovereign and isolate Viles.

Still words effloresced in the hollow. She does. She must be extinguished. Her power must be extinguished.

With whispers and subtle blandishments, and by slow increments, the Ravers obliquely taught the Viles to loathe their own forms.

Other shapes and images agreed. We will not survive her presence.

Their transformation had begun with mistrust and contempt toward the surviving mind of the One Forest, and toward the Forestals.

Somewhere beyond or beneath perception, Jeremiah replied, "She can't hear you. They've overwhelmed her. She's lost."

Linden, find me.

Lost, she echoed. Oh, yes. Nothing in her life had equipped her to disentangle such chaos. If she could have lifted her fingers to the ring hanging from its chain around her neck, she might have drawn it over her head and tossed it aside, abdicating its indelible responsibility. But even that effort surpa.s.sed her. Her grasp on the Staff of Law was all that preserved her from tentacles of twilight, and she clung to it with both hands.

Survive her presence-? That made no sense. She posed no threat to such creatures. Even Covenant's plans would not affect the fate of the Viles. Heeding the Ravers, they had decided their own doom.

Is that cause for regret? multifarious voices countered in visions, pictographs, as ultimate as ebony. It is not. We are not what we were.

And she is a lover of trees. Another Vile-or the same Vile in another avatar. Let her destroy them as she does us. She will reproach herself hereafter. We will be spared.

Spared? Linden saw indignation. Do you name extinction "spared"?

We do. Existence is tedium. Naught signifies. What are we, that we should seek to prolong it?

A lover of trees. In spite of her fragmentation, the reiteration of that accusation touched something deep within her, some delitescent capacity for pa.s.sion and choice. She was Linden Avery, a lover of trees in all sooth. Long ago, her health-sense had opened her to the vital loveliness of the woods and blooms and greenswards of Andelain. Their beauty had exalted her when she had taken hold of Vain and Findail with wild magic in order to fashion a new Staff of Law. Now she grasped that Staff in her mortal hands.

Because she was who she was, and did not mean to fail, she opened her mouth so that a shape could emerge into the swirling, interwoven gloom. It formed a yellow moire, oneiric and tenuous.

"Why?"

In response, she smelled surprise. As it bled across her senses, its tang was unmistakable.

She speaks, one or all of the Viles displayed across her vision. And one or several replied, What of it? It is not lore. And again: Ignorance and falsehood guide her kind. Their boredom reeked. It was ever so. They are a pestilence which the Earth endures solely because their lives are brief.

Were the Viles lofty and admirable? Perhaps they had once been. Perhaps they remained so. In the texture and hue of their voices, however, Linden discerned the black urgings of moksha, turiya, and samadhi.

They also do not concern us.

Under other circ.u.mstances, she might have been appalled. Now she was not. She had uttered a single word-and the Viles had heard her.

"Why?" she repeated. Her voice was fulvous in the imposed twilight; tinged with brimstone. "Why are you here?

Why do you care? This doesn't have anything to do with you."

Another scend of surprise stung her nose, her eyes. Tears ran like stridulation down her cheeks.

She does not merely speak. She speaks to us. She desires to be heard.

What of it? they answered themselves in knots and coils of darkness. She holds great powers without lore. No word of hers has meaning here.

Have done with this, several Viles urged at once. Extinguish her. Her life does not profit us.

Others disagreed. She saw their severity as they answered, When power speaks, it is wisdom to give heed.

And still others: When have we ever done otherwise? And others, contemptuously: In what fashion does unexercised power imply wisdom?

Their debate made her stronger. She held the Staff of Law. And they were divided in their desires. They were Viles, on the cusp of learning to despise themselves.

The Elohim considered her the Wildwielder. If they were right, the Viles should have feared her. She might bring Time and all existence to an end.

You can hear me," she p.r.o.nounced, speaking now in lambent chrysoprase and jacinth rather than saffron blots. "I deserve an answer. If you think that you have the right to destroy me, you owe me an explanation. I haven't done anything to you. I wouldn't harm you if I could.

"Why are you here?"

Semiprecious gems winked and hinted among the streaming tendrils. Then they were gone.

We will not heed her. Disdain and scruples crept over her skin. We must.

Before she could insist on a reply, all or several or one of the Viles stated in stark obsidian, Lover of trees, we are here because the others exert hazardous theurgies-and you permit them, holding powers which have no need of theirs. Your folly compels us. The wood that you claim must defy them, yet it does not.

Simultaneously other avatars proclaimed, You strive toward Melenkurion Skyweir and the Power of Command. But the master of white gold has no use for the EarthBlood, and its Power cannot Command wild magic.

You serve a purpose not your own, and have no purpose.

The voices daunted her. Her commingled senses confounded her. The Viles knew too much; and yet they did not know enough to recognize their true peril. Nor could they comprehend her love for her son. They were not mortal.

We will not survive- The wood that you claim must defy them- They had answered her. Yet they had not told her what she wanted to know.

Shaping her bafflement into a form of persistence, she said. "No. Not that." Now the words emerged as emerald and malachite; reified consternation. "I've already told you. That doesn't have anything to do with you.

"Why are you here? In this part of the Land? You live in the Lost Deep." In caverns as ornate and majestic as castles. "If you weren't so far from where you belong, you wouldn't know or care about us."

There they devoted their vast power and knowledge to the making of beauty and wonder, and all of their works were filled with loveliness.

Covenant and Jeremiah may have continued calling to her, but she could not feel their voices.

This time, the surprise of the Viles smelled of decay and old rot; moldering. She has lore. To a.s.sume ignorance misleads us.

She does not, they declared scornfully. No mere human knows of our demesne.

Separately and in unison, one at a time, together, they announced, She has been taught. Advised. Therefore she hazards devastation.

Therefore, they concluded, she must be answered.

Therefore, they also decided, she must not.

Their darkness gathered until it threatened to blot out the sun. Are we not Viles? Do we fear her? If they chose to extinguish her, they would be able to do so. The bewilderment of her senses left her vulnerable.

When she fell, they might claim Covenant's ring- Yet she saw them p.r.o.nounce clearly, We do not.

We do not, they agreed. We also have been advised.

Their ire and a.s.sent as they answered her smelled as mephitic as a charnel. Lover of trees, they flared like a plunge into a chasm, lightless and unfathomable, we have learned that this remnant of forest despises us. Its master considers us with disdain. We have come to discover the cause of his contumely. We have done naught to merit opprobrium among the woodlands.

Linden might have been horrified; incapable of argument. But Esmer had prepared her for this. That which appears evil need not have been so from the beginning, and need not remain so until the end. Hidden among his betrayals were gifts as precious as friendship.

In shapes as ready as knives, colors as obdurate as travertine, she countered. "That's a lie. You were 'advised.' You said so. By the Ravers. But they didn't tell you the truth. These trees don't despise you. They're too busy grieving. It's humans they hate. My kind. Not yours."

"d.a.m.nation," said Covenant in a visceral mutter, a sensation of squirming across Linden's defenseless skin. "She's trying to reason with them."

"I told you." Jeremiah's voice made no sound, but she could see it. It was crimson, the precise hue of blood; bright with disgust and grudging admiration. "I remember her. She doesn't give up."

"Then we'll have to do it." Covenant's reply itched like swarming ants. "Get ready."

Linden's heart yearned for her companions. But she ignored them. She could not reach them now. Surrounded by Viles and implicit death, she had brought herself to a precipice, and could only keep her balance or die.